'Sex manual' from 1720 banned for hundreds of years to be sold at auction

A shocking “sex manual” from 1720 that outlined the “secrets of sex” and was banned for over 200 years is to be put up for auction.

“Aristotle’s Masterpiece Completed In Two Parts, The First Containing the Secrets of Generation” is over 300 years old and was originally published in London.

The time-worn book is due to go under the hammer Hanson’s in Ewall near Derbyshire.

Jim Spencer books and manuscripts valuer at the auction house said that the book was originally produced in 1684 and was “as good as banned” until the 1960s.

The “sex manual” is over 300 years old

He said: “There were several reasons for that. For example, it includes woodcut illustrations of ‘monsters’ that ‘are begot by Women’s unnatural lying with Beasts’ – an example being a woman ‘generating with a dog.’”

The book includes several illustrations of men with tails and monsters being born.

The manual includes pictures of “beast men”

Mr Spencer said that the unnatural actions of women in the book are “blamed on ‘filthy and corrupt affection’. But you have to bear in mind that this book was written when people were still being burnt for witchcraft in Georgian England.”

The lewd manual also offered sex tips for married men and women.

In a section entitled: “A Word of Advice to both Sexes in the Act of Copulation” the author wrote:

“I do advise, before they begin their conjugal embraces to invigorate their mutual desires and make their flames burn with a fiercer ardour by those endearing ways that love can better teach than I can write.

“And when they have done what nature can require, a man must have a care he does not part too soon from the embraces of his wife”.

It advises women to imagine their child as a replica of their husband

Newly-weds could also glean some advice on the best time “procreate”.

The author wrote: “the fittest time for the procreation of male children is when the sun is in Leo and moon in Virgo, Scorpio or Sagittarius … to begat a female the best time is when the Moon is in the wane, in Libra or Aquarius”.

Several other bizarre claims are made throughout the book including the presumption that if a woman imagines her future child vividly enough she can dictate what it will look like, and claims that a woman’s sexual desires can be controlled by what she eats.

Mr Spencer said: “A century after women first won the right to vote in the UK, this book takes us back to very different times. It talks of man being ‘the wonder of the world, to whom all things are subordinate’. Meanwhile women are painted as being prone to sexual indulgence.”

The book is due to be auctioned off on March 27 at a Library Auction at Hanson’s auctioneers.